The Fugitive

The Fugitive was a film noir TV series released on September 17th, 1963.

The plot of the show is centered around a pediatrician from Indiana, named Richard Kimble who is wrongly convicted for the brutal murder of his wife. Kimble is given the death penalty and sent to prison, and his wife’s real killer, the one armed man is free to roam the country without consequence. Kimble escapes prison when the bus that is transporting him crashes on the side of a highway. So begins his pursuit of the one-armed man as well as his attempts to stay one step ahead of the detectives who mean to bring him back to justice. Kimble dyes his hair and assumes new identities in every single town he seeks refuge in. These various identities serve as a catalyst or a lightning rod for the problems of other people he interacts with, for example, in this episode, a recently divorced woman with a child who is escaping an abusive husband in hopes of starting a new life for her and her son. Kimble becomes involved as a coworker of the woman, when he attempts to stop a man, who will later be revealed as her husband, from harassing her at the place that she and Kimble both work at. It is difficult for me at this point in history to imagine a place where you can simply change your name and show up to work in almost any town you choose where you do not have a preceding reputation. The government most likely didn’t care about that sort of thing until there was a massive influx of immigrants into this country, which wouldn’t happen until 30 years after this TV show existed. After 2000 there was an average of 1 million immigrants coming into the United States every year.
The immediate problem of the woman being able to escape her omnipresent abusive husband is solved within 60 minutes but the larger problem of a seemingly futile pursuit of the one armed man and the illusion of the law, continues a lot longer. However, I find the suspension of disbelief or the believability of this story to be quite faulty for a few reasons. How is the one armed man being tracked in a Pre-Internet Pre-Google, Pre-Myspace, Pre-Facebook environment. Maybe that is a very narrow perspective, but I find it difficult, that in an area as large as the United States, that one person can be tracked on “hunches’ or instincts, especially a person who appeared as a silloutette at first. I’m aware that chasing the one armed man allows for exciting content to be generated for each and every episode for a few seasons. Maybe upon viewing the show in its entireity I can see exactly how a person can be tracked from hunches out of thin air. Maybe there is a system or a methodology behind that that I as an outsider haven’t been allowed to tap into.
The woman he meets in this episode seems to serve a few purposes as well. While at the same time she appears to legitimize the Fugitive in a town where he is seeking refuge, and provide companionship and friendship for Kimble, at the same time, she seems to represent aspiratins for normality. There were several points where she seemed to serve as a potential love interest. But there is not to be a love interested for a recently widowed doctor on a hunt for his wife’s killer and on the run from the law. Those types of people just don’t prove to be good love interests and have a lot of immediate issues and baggage….which is a lesson I never learned.
In one of the most important years in American history its easy to wonder how the Fugitive has fit in in a time where everything was seen on television and most of America was there to see it. Months after the release of the fugitive preseident John F Kennedy was to be assassinated, and therefore rocking an already shakey foundation of security and stability felt by the American People. The instability no doubt had already been felt at this point by a few since the Civil Rights Movement was underway. Maybe The Fugitive served as a way to stir up security at a time post McCarthy